It's Official!

I was approved for ordination today. For those of you not in the know regarding the minutia of this process in the UCC, today was the culmination of 2 and a half years of ongoing work - writing, mentoring, gathering with the committee on ministry and my support team, a 6 hour psych evaluation, and a seminary-level course. It has been up and down. My insecurities and imposter syndrome, my defensiveness whenever I feel pressured to “land” theologically, my need for belonging. All of it made an appearance in the last 2 and a half years. Today was the last hurdle before I get an ordainable gig and plan a service to make it official.

What unexpectedly touched me this morning as I was getting ready, was that today was an affirmation of God’s work in my life since I was 14. I’m 42. When I saw the 50+ faces on the Zoom screen today from 20 something churches in my region of the US, gathered to discuss my 21-page (single-spaced!) final paper, the tears just started falling. Because in 28 years, this was the first time where I was standing before a community of people who were there to witness the work of God in me. I am not a threat to the work of God. I am, in fact, a participant. Of course, that has always been true (and is true of many others). When I was a teen, I received covert help over the years when ministers hoped the elders wouldn’t notice. The years in worship ministry, youth ministry, campus ministry, women’s ministry, children’s ministry, overseas mission work, and now chaplaincy just started scrolling behind my eyes. What a time I have had.

I thought about how much a part of my early connection with my former spouse was about ministry. It was something that brought us together. For a time. We made these beautiful daughters. At some point, he no longer shared that vision. The community agreed with him. I felt left behind. Because my access to use my gifts in ministry were tied to his calling before. Much later, we got divorced. But I wasn’t left behind. Our paths diverged. I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t deconstructed that tidy world I lived in then. Huh.

And now. Somehow. I’m going to be able to feed my little girls with money I make. In ministry. As their mom.

I don’t know if it is quantifiable how much having my gender be a determining factor in my qualifications for ministry has harmed me over a lifetime. The scars are there. I have done the grief work and can remain connected to those roots without having them continue to tell me what’s possible.

The faces of all my CPE colleagues - the people who took the time to call me out, to be with me as a grew and cried and integrated so much for so long, were all there. The supervisors. The educators. The patients. The colleagues. The security officers. My professors. My seminary cohort. The friend who gave me my first opportunity to preach. With all of this in my heart, and a feeling of awe in how many people continue to gather around for prayer and witness of God’s continuing work in me, I stepped into the spotlight today.

Wildly, someone from the church of Christ was there. Someone who also sojourned to the UCC. He private messaged me at the beginning - “do I know you? Are you so and so’s wife?” What a small world, y’all. The irony was not lost on me.

I am no one’s wife. But I am a reverend.

Waking Up Surprised

I was leaving the YMCA yesterday and saw a houseless man with one leg in a wheelchair, the other having been amputated just below the knee. He was using his one leg on the ground to propel him forward and seemed to be used to getting around that way as he was not actively struggling with it or seemingly upset.

I’ve worked with so many patients who have gone through amputation surgeries and for whatever reason, this type of loss is one of the ones I am most drawn to support people in. I have been with houseless folks pre-surgery, showing me their black feet (when I say black feet, I mean BLACK feet…this was a new sort dead tissue for me to see before working at an inner city hospital) as a kind of anticipatory grief practice. I knew the next time I saw him, instead of his uncovered black feet, I would see two nubs covered in bandages. We imagined how his life would change, being discharged to the streets without feet. We joked about the difficulties of stealing from stores in a wheelchair when his practice had been to run. The wounds from these surgeries require high levels of hygiene, which is completely impossible in a tent.

I’ve had so many patients at the VA who had undergone these types of losses years earlier only to adapt and come back to us with other health issues. But sometimes the trauma of those losses remained unprocessed. It is a strange thing to lose part of your body.

I bring all of this up to say, there is a certain kind of disorientation that comes from waking up to a new/changed/different body. And though I am unbelievably lucky so far to have kept all my wanted body parts, every once in awhile, I wake up to my very different life and feel a sense of surprise. Surprise that I left my seventeen-year marriage, surprise that I am the only adult in my house, surprise that my house is full of pets, surprise that my life has fully de-centered men in every way. Of course, this feeling of surprise is often followed by a little thrill of excitement and pride.

It seems kind of shitty to even compare this type of total reorientation in life to something as major as losing a foot or a leg. Like, in some ways, saying this is just not cool at all. I’m guessing my houseless friend isn’t feeling thrill when he looks down at his new nubs and bandages. But I think all humans experience grief and disorientation. And the feelings themselves are often so similar even if the details are really different. Maybe he is thrilled to know that he will no longer have to see those black dead feet. I’m not really sure.

Perhaps having a beloved but dead body part excised in order to live a safer and healthier life is not unlike leaving a relationship that has since died* and feels like a weight one can no longer bear. That in leaving behind what is dead, new life is on the horizon. Even if it’s not the life that was imagined and sacrificed so highly to reach for. It’s an opportunity. A new future that is unwritten.

I was raised to believe that divorce is a bad thing. And certainly there is a lot of pain in divorce and it is a hugely destabilizing process for children and adults.

And. Would I tell my houseless friend that it was a bad thing to remove his blackened feet? No. I don’t think I would. There is a quiet dignity in burying our beloved dead body parts and relationships. It is intellectually honest. And it makes room for the spirit to breathe again, to stop the creep that dead tissue sometimes does, invading healthy tissue in a race to win it all.

In many ways, I’ve left behind the binary thinking of good and bad. I’m learning to be in my body, to awaken desire, to FEEL, really feel the full human experience. It is a wild thing to be alive.

*Please know that these comments are specific to my experience and a relational dynamic I was part of and participated in for two decades. This is not a reflection on the personhood of my former spouse.

When Ash Wednesday Fits Like a Glove

For those who follow the Christian liturgical calendar, Ash Wednesday comes 40 days before Easter and commemorates the beginning of the Lenten season. It’s a time to honor the reality that we are mortal. We say things like “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” While this may seem morbid and even gross as we literally put ashes on our faces, as a Palliative Care chaplain in the middle of a divorce after a 17 year marriage, it could not be more fitting. I am not living a life right now that can ignore loss and sorrow. It is all over my face.

As seems to happen more often than not since the pandemic, my community’s plans had to change as we received an unexpected deluge of snow today and the city shut down. So I self-administered the ashes I swiped from work before I left for home early to beat the anxious Portlanders to the freeway.

I arrived at my quiet and beautiful home, to the stillness that comes on the days my children are with their father, with the communion cup of ashes clutched in my grip to protect them from the falling snow.

I took a nap. I had an orgasm. I ate pasta in bed. I listened to my favorite women on a podcast. Then I hopped on Zoom to see my people and to hold the tender truth in community that we all are dust and will return to dust one day. And, that somehow, this dust is magic. Magic put here on earth, animated and full of life and love and hopes and dreams. We lit our candles, burned our pages, had our communion, anointed ourselves with oil, and imposed our own ashes. We talked for awhile afterwards, checking in on each other, inquiring about the lives of new folks (there are always new folks), and sharing our community’s joys and concerns.

It is a bittersweet thing to spend so much time with death. So many of my friends from work are dying patients. And, we are the only sentient beings as fully aware of our impermanence. We live in this reality we so often would prefer was not true - that everything we know and love and rely on will eventually end. Our very deepest attachments are all temporary.

We can imagine that dust is so insignificant that it just blows away with a small gust of wind, never to be seen again. It would be so easy to think that the dust, that we, are inconsequential. And yet. That is where the magic comes from. This God who breathed life into us, gave us these deeply feeling, deeply attaching hearts with the full awareness that all will eventually go back into the ground. The meaning is not in spite of the impermanence. I think it is, at least partially, because of it. It is because we know that everything we care about is temporary, that it becomes worthy of our full presence, attention, and being while we have it.

We have it. Right now.

We’ve lost some of it already. What do we need to be present to in this moment? And what do we need to mourn and bury?

Intent is No Longer Enough

I’ve written quite a bit on here about my value of assigning positive intent in my relationships. It has helped me so much in my marriage, with my relationship with feedback, and in my journey towards self-kindness. It’s been in my peripheral vision for some time now that impact is different than intent and that impact also matters. But it’s finally clicking this week, with everything happening culturally around the inherent dignity of black lives, that impact is actually a higher rubric than intention. It is my new goal to take responsibility for my impact while holding necessary space for my intention. I can hold space within myself to validate a good intention while still taking public responsibility for a harmful impact.

This space, my blog, has been a wonderful way for me to share my faith deconstruction experience, learn to tune into my own voice, and to express my anger, which was an emotion I had blocked within myself (I think this is common for evangelical women). The impact has been largely positive. However, the impact has not been only positive. I have written posts that have hurt people, ended relationships, and created lasting impacts in my personal life. And while I think sometimes pain leads to growth (hello our current racial justice tension - this is the way forward towards systemic change), it does not mean that people who were just going about their lives found themselves being called out by me publicly appreciated my writing about them. I understand that part of writing in public inevitably creates some negative reactions, but I also want to take responsibility for the impact I’ve made that has been harmful.

I certainly don’t want to link the posts that created harm here, but I do want to name people who I have harmed in my writing. I want to apologize to Ben Cook, Billy and Brenda McKenzie, and Kristi Belt for any harm my writing caused you. The impact of my self-expression in your life has not exactly been life-giving. And for that, I am sorry.

It’s amazing how long some things take to click in my mind. I think that might be just how learning works. But I’d rather apologize really late than not apologize at all. I’m truly sorry for hurting you.

Pentecost - Speaking Truth to Power

The world is on fire, friends. We’re living in a global pandemic. Black men are being kneeled on to their deaths. Our cities are burning. Our economy is crashing. People are hungry. And scared. And angry. This is our reality. The question is not “why can’t we all just get along?” That is a white question. The question is, for us white folks, “what the hell are we gonna do about it?” This is not the time to ask our black brothers and sisters to do our emotional labor. This is a time to stand in between them and the police. This is a time to speak truth to power. If our police are not breaking rules while they stand on black necks, the rules have got to change. Period.

The Holy Spirit is a woman. I’m sure of it. Hell, she’s probably a black woman. Today is the day the Christian church celebrates and worships the Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. She put little embryo Jesus into young Mary’s womb. She created the world alongside her Trinity partners. She is no slouch. And she is what wells within us when we speak truth to power. She is the Spirit of disruption when systems are unjust. The Holy Spirit of God is not here to placate my white fragility. She is the voice that calls me to question my motives, my fear, my silence.

The events in our country this week, specifically the murder of George Floyd, should cause every white person in this country, especially white Christians who believe in the sanctity of life, to look in the mirror and ask, “What can I do?” “What do I need to learn?” “How am I complicit in his death?” And then GET. TO. WORK.

I decided not to post an image of George’s death. There was a time in my process of looking at my white privilege where I shared images of violence against people of color and forced myself to watch the videos of the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile in order to wake myself up to the reality of the black experience. That is important. If you have not exposed yourself to the material that exists of these moments and find any hesitation within yourself to speak out, watch the videos. You need to. But I also know that black people have seen enough of this footage to hold the trauma in their DNA. Generations, hundreds of years of oppression lives in their very cells. So I will not post that here. It is available for you to see. Instead, I chose to put an image of George when he was alive and healthy. I got it from Shaun King’s Facebook page (he’s a great social media follow if you’re looking to learn).

If you believe in the Holy Spirit and celebrate her power and beauty this year on Pentecost, I ask that you beg her to tell you what to do today in response to George’s life and death.

There is no peace without justice. May we do the work to enjoy the peace we all desire.

To Be a Witness

A huge part of chaplaincy work is witnessing people in the midst of the hardest moments of their lives. It is one of the most interesting, devastating, and humbling parts of the job for me. It also means that the illusion of safety and fairness that most adults live in so as to carry on in the world is largely refuted every time I come to work. I tend to take risks under the premise of “what are the odds that x, y, and z will actually occur?” Well, in the hospital setting, I am regularly confronted with the exception to those odds. I’m spending time witnessing a mother whose baby did drown in the bathtub or the spouse whose husband did commit suicide. It’s harder to maintain my self-imposed delusions that I live in a world where I can control the outcomes of circumstances related to the people and things I care about most. It is its own form of unraveling.

I am regularly overwhelmed by the tragedy of the human experience. I know my lens right now is specific to hospital work in a pandemic, but some really shitty things happen in the world. It can be so horrific to play my part as witness. There is no way to be a witness and remain disengaged, nor should I remove myself emotionally even if I could. The purpose of the witness is to hold space, document, reflect, and create a sense of solidarity in the horror of what is happening. And while the patient or the patient’s family is in fact living their own story and I am living mine, the intersection of my story with the stories of the suffering day in and day out creates a level of vulnerability and fatigue that has changed me in a real way. Not in a traumatic way or in a way that I think I would regret, but there is a way of navigating the world without really knowing and seeing the depth of what is possible in a moment of freak miscalculation or accident. I will never go back to that space of not knowing. And while that means I am operating without as many protective illusions about life and safety and fairness, it also means that I am holding gratitude and deep appreciation for what is. What I have, what I may lose, who I come home at the end of the day. As cheesy as it sounds, all I have is now. And I am infinitely blessed.

I’m still working out my theology of suffering. I know that the “everything happens for a reason” and “God’s plan includes this” kinds of frameworks do not work for me. I personally cannot navigate a world of suffering with the idea that God approves it all or that suffering is okay. I absolutely cannot. I do believe in a God of redemption and restoration. I believe in a God who does care for humanity collectively and personally. But shit happens and it happens lethally and unfairly. That is a hard thing to witness every single day. There is so much in this hospital system and in the realities of life that are not mine to hold or fix. But this much I know. I can be a witness and I personally can only do it through faith.

CPE - A Marathon of Unraveling

I had a friend ask recently how things were going for me at the hospital. For those of you who don’t know, I am almost done with a unite of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) that began right as everything shut down because of COVID-19. That means I started a full-time unpaid job at a hospital in the final weeks of my master’s program in the middle of a global pandemic. I’m weird. My kids’ first day home from school was my first day at work at the hospital. My graduate degree is done now (Yea!) and I’m closing in on my final weeks of CPE. It’s weird to think about what it will be like when all of this is done as the job I planned to return to for the summer at the Y probably won’t be up and running still. Eh, if anything COVID-19 has taught me is to just plan on today. I’ll think about that later.

Everyone I talked to before starting CPE who had done it themselves described it as “intense.”* I thought I was well-suited for the work because I’ve done a lot of personal work and therapy and have a disposition for connecting with strangers. Turns out, that’s all true. AND my work is ongoing. Like, some of it is just beginning. The difference between chaplaincy and other spiritual or counseling work is that the chaplain’s presence IS the intervention, which means the chaplain must connect to their own emotions and story in order to engage the person at their point of need (rather than meeting their needs). We do not provide guidance and information. We go into the valley where the patient is and engage the feelings of what that’s like. We do not escort people out of their valley nor do we skirt around the valleys we’d rather avoid. This means my story is regularly activated and I have to care for myself as I stay present with people in sometimes the hardest moments of their lives. I’ve seen some real shit, you guys. So. Many. Hard. Things. This means I cry at work. This means I’m sometimes triggered by interactions. There is no “fixing” things or experiences for others. I cannot and will not rob others of their work to do. It is their story. Our stories just cross paths for a moment. I am an enneagram 2 called to witness the human experience and not fix it. I’m called to engage the pain and tragedy of what it is to be a human being.

In this process, I have experienced a beautiful unraveling. I’m shedding narratives about myself that are no longer serving me and I’m realizing what I can and cannot do. It’s an experience in exploring my own spiritual authority and allowing my intuition to participate actively while keeping my personal curiosity in check. It’s an experience in examining all my relational and emotional patterns. It’s unblocking certain feelings and experiences I haven’t attended to or receiving feedback from my peers about things I don’t know about how I come across to others. It’s bringing myself to the table of engagement without making the moment about me. My story becomes in service to theirs. I’m discovering the types of encounters I really enjoy (post-partum moms with their babies) and the ones that require a shit ton of care after (turns out, code blues aren’t as sexy as I’d anticipated).

It’s coming into a patient’s life for just a moment in the hopes of providing transitional care and shoring up their support systems for their long-term work. In some ways, my scope of practice is small. Most patients I only see one time. But I like to think that just having someone hold space for your reality in the midst of a traumatic experience can help lessen the work leftover when the trauma has passed. It also means that my role can be as a conduit for someone to practice their faith the way they prefer, which can be totally different from the way I practice mine. So sometimes I get to be a part of someone connecting to their spiritual leader or to words and methods of prayer or meditation I’ve never experienced in my tradition or even my religion. It’s an incredible honor to be that link. I really love it when I get to do that. One time I got to stand in for a Catholic priest (visitation for them is limited to end of life circumstances) and rather than activating my semi-regularly present impostor’s syndrome, I felt ELATED by it. My Catholic grandparents were with me with my arm raised above my precious friend who requested a blessing.

I don’t know what’s next for me. I feel like I have so many emotional internet browser “tabs” open right now, so many things I need to work on within myself. And plenty of shifts to cover and Zoom meetings to attend. But in the midst of this tornado, I’m being reborn. I’m growing. I’m coming into my calling. I’m being integrated into a more mature, authoritative version of myself.

* In case you’re unfamiliar with the process, CPE is done in units of 12 weeks of work. If you’re lucky enough to get a residency (my long-term goal), you can do 4 units consecutively and get paid. I’ve almost completed an internship at Legacy Emanuel in Portland, which will give me one unit. I can’t do a ton with one unit, though many places hire someone with 2. CPE involves shift work, classes, supervision, reading/writing, group work, and mentoring. I’ve got mainly 12 hour overnight shifts where I’m the only chaplain there for an adult hospital, children’s hospital and the Oregon Burn Center. It’s over 550 beds. I go to all the codes, deaths, attend to requests for spiritual care, and round on all our trauma admits. I pray with people pre-surgery, assist patients and their families with naming feelings, sifting through their experience in the hospital and what brought them to us. I attend to families who have lost a family member. I help people fill out an Advance Directive (including things like a DNR). I’ve sat with a lot of people who were on the brink of death, including infants. I help people pick out funeral homes and figure out how to honor their dead in the midst of a pandemic. The work is varied. I never know what’s on the other side of that door. The 12 hour overnight shifts are covered by interns every night for the whole 12 weeks, so on the days we have class, one of us was always on the night before and one of us is always on the night after. It’s a fascinating experiment in what the human body and heart can handle.

Maundy Thursday - Huh

It seems fitting to me that this is the first year I have participated in my church’s Maundy Thursday service (of course, on Zoom). If you haven’t ever included this Holy Day in your spiritual practice, it is an commemoration of Jesus’ last day before his crucifixion. We take communion and we tell the story of his death. Then we regather on Easter morning to break the vigil we begin on Maundy Thursday to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

I say it seems fitting because this year, death feels close. Thankfully, I am not ill. None of my loved ones are ill. And I know that makes me incredibly privileged during this time of COVID-19, where the virus seems all around us. But between the virus and my CPE work at the hospital, it seems I am daily being confronted with the reality of death.

It has become part of my spiritual practice to attend to the dead and dying and their loved ones. This is new work for me. I have not been around a lot of death, though I spent my childhood in community and we certainly lost many people over the years. Somehow, being in those hospital rooms, especially with such limited visitation right now, this feels different.

For one, I am witnessing it almost every day I come into work (this is not a reflection of the state of the virus, but I think a common experience in Spiritual Care practice). That’s a lot of death. And now today, I spent a bit of my evening singing and reading the story of the death of God.

There’s a true heaviness to this time and to the work of God in the world sometimes. It is not all light and breezy. And for me, it has become important practice to not wish the heaviness away (I don’t mean to never take a break, but rather to not play ‘hot potato’ with it). This work, this deep, deathly work is important to what it means to be a human being. It’s hard. There are a lot of feelings to experience: fear, sadness, grief, anxiety, anger, resentment, frustration, stress…I could name every feeling and it it probably applies in the roller coaster experience that is death.

One of my fellow CPE interns recently said, “There’s no more human thing to do than to die.” And I thought, “That would not have been something I would have subscribed to three months ago.” This is a specific season, a specific time - both in the world and in our lives.

And I guess I wanted to come on here tonight and just wish peace and love to everyone as we communally go through death both in the Holy Week that is Easter and in the experience of COVID-19, where so much is left feeling uncertain and unstable. I think in all the instability and loss, we can find God here. I think he can meet us here. He can be present with us in this.

I don’t subscribe to any idea that God brings suffering or inflicts it deliberately. What a cruel thing to believe. I believe in love. And you know what? Love meets us in suffering. That’s why loss hurts so much in the first place - it’s the evidence that we experienced love at all. Glennon Doyle calls it our receipt. Embrace the pain of loss and hold on tight. There is beauty and growth waiting for us in the pain. Not when all the pain goes away - right now, in the pain.

And if this isn’t the right message for you tonight, if you need something happier and more shiny, it’s okay to skip me this time. I totally understand how important it is to guard our consumption of material right now. But if you’re feeling the heaviness, I just want you to know, that’s what makes you human. And humans do hard things. You are loved. Easter Sunday is coming.

Lyrical Scrapbook

Do you ever listen to music that makes you sad because it takes you back in time? Tonight, Tim put on some old worship songs that were new-ish the last time we consistently worshiped God in a corporate church setting. Think, Chris Tomlin 10 years ago. Songs I forgot I knew. Suddenly, we’re harmonizing in our kitchen, singing songs about a God my children haven’t had hammered into their heads and hearts since birth. I wonder if they thought it was weird we were suddenly singing about Jesus.

I’ve changed so much in the last 10 years. I’m not looking to be Kristy circa 2010. But there’s something in my subconscious that remembers her heart in a visceral way when those lyrics start coming out of my mouth. I miss singing with my husband. I miss feeling so deeply. I miss the certainty I used to feel. The music immediately made me contemplative and sad and ready to write again. It’s been a minute since I’ve given myself space and time to be an artist, the writer that I am. I’ve been busy and overtaxed and working and doing school. Sometimes reflection feels like a luxury.

I feel myself being pulled towards new endeavors. This year has been a time of transition. I became my parents’ business partner and took on a fairly weighty part-time leadership position at the YMCA. I graduate from my grad program in May. I’ve started recording a podcast (you’ll hear all about it when it gets closer to being released)! Both of the girls started new schools this year. We’ve traveled a lot for fun and school and work. In all of this, I’ve been curious to see how things will play out for me. I’ve been interviewing. I’ve been in talks with Tim about what he is or isn’t willing to do for my career (neither of us is looking to move). Though this process has been months long, it took until this afternoon for me to acknowledge that the “not knowing-ness” of all of this is actually pretty hard for me. I can adapt to almost any change, but the waiting for answers part is hard for me. I just want to know what’s coming. I’m in a season where it’s harder to be the planner I instinctively am.

For a few years, I dabbled with becoming a person who thought that God was not involved in the minutia of these things. Why would the Creator care about how I spend my working hours? Why are Americans so obsessed with ourselves? I know the individualistic, self-absorbed narrative is bullshit. And yet. These songs still slip out of my mouth. There is a fractured part of me longing to reemerge - clean, new, different. But no longer severed, no longer cast out. Is there a way to hold the tension of my own ego and the reality that the Spirit of God is among us, moving and working? Not in one cosmic plan obsessed with individual vanity and selfish gain, not one obsessed with consequences of a hell fire I pray doesn’t even exist, but in a dance that draws all of the cosmos to redemption and freedom and grace? Dare I affirm that my life might be part of that? Again, not in a way that makes me special or different, but in the very possible reality that God offers participation in his kingdom now…not one that’s looking to condemn everyone around me but one that is manifesting real, embodied hope? I wonder.

Hospitality is More of a Posture than an Industry

I just got back from my grad school intensive last week in Durham, NC. What a trip! People who have done my program often say that Durham is the best out of the four intensives. It was phenomenal. The class we focused on together is called, Hospitality as Leadership, led by a kick ass female head of the Bible department (first in the churches of Christ…Naomi, you’re a bad ass).

If you’ve spent any time in the Bible, particularly the Jesus stuff, you’ll know that hospitality was something Jesus got in trouble for a lot. Not the hospitality industry where everything is fancy and requires payment, but old school hospitality where whores were washing his feet and terrorists were sharing meals with the religious folk (much to their horror). Jesus was the type of guy who broke a lot of rules. He hung out with people he wasn’t supposed to and he shared food with them, which in the Jewish faith was a major no-no. And while I like rule-breaking to a level I never admired when I was younger, I don’t think this was just because Jesus liked to theologically rumble from time to time (though I think he did) but because he really thought people were more important than laws and rules. He made space for people who society had said didn’t deserve space (uh oh, how can you not think of our border crisis now?!?!) I even think that he didn’t welcome those who weren’t “worthy” by society’s standards in spite of their station socially but because of their status. Having lived a life of a “lower” person, perhaps their perspective was important, irreplaceable, needed in the religious world? When everyone has a seat at the table, the conversation changes.

Part of what we do in the program is develop personal rhythms to sustain us in our spiritual practices and studies. It’s not about learning all the things with books but about experimenting and being open to new ideas and ways of life. But reading all the books and writing all the papers along with trying to make space for those we’ve been told don’t matter requires A LOT of self-care. Hence, the rhythms. It includes intentionality around prayer, hospitality, attentiveness, and simplicity. We write them ourselves so it’s really just a way to create something for us (we have a spiritual formation director who supports us in this…shout out to Natalie). And I am being more intentional with my hosting and being hosted within my family.

And so I had this moment with my oldest this morning…this daughter who I keep thinking won’t need me as much now that she’s in middle school. And yet, this kid shouts good-bye to me in front of all the cool kids at the bus stop and wants me there waiting for her (two blocks from our house) every day after school. She is giving me opportunities to host her and to be hosted by her. I’ve heard this in the context of marriage being described as “love bids.” Partners, and all loved ones, give us opportunities all the time to lean in or to lean out of the relationship. And while part of me thinks “can’t she just walk two blocks alone, I already took my bra off?!?!”, what this class is reminding me is that my daughter wants to host me in her day. The question is, can I make space for her while I host myself? I have a body and my own emotional needs and an incredibly demanding schedule. Those things are involved in just being me in my life right now. I need to make space for me in the midst of my life and that requires a lot of care and balance with my time and energy. Can I also make space, in these little ways, to say yes to hosting and being hosted by my child? And can I see those opportunities for connection as not just part of my motherly duty (does that ever really end?) but as even a way to bring blessings to me? This is not a one way street.

A lot of ideas around hospitality now are about helping guests feel comfortable. And that is really important. But have you ever played the role of host for the evening and at the end of the day, felt refreshed by the company? Have you felt loved and heard even as you poured coffee and served food? We think that hospitality is a top-down, one-direction dynamic. But, if we’re honest and also open, hospitality can be a circle. We can give and receive throughout the evening and the entire relationship. When I was in ministry, I positioned myself as giver and rarely as receiver. What an exhausting and prideful way to live! And how much did I miss out on when I postured myself that way?

I just wrote about seeing myself as a colander creating space for people to share things. That idea is in line with hospitality. It’s not about a physical space (Jesus was not a home owner). It’s about connection. It’s about eye contact. It’s about paying attention. Maybe it’s actually a gift from God to me that my oldest is open and honest about her need for me. And maybe that’s not another thing on my list but the exact thing I need to remind myself that my priority is love, no matter how easy it is to get caught up in everything else.

Energy Levels

I’ve been talking with some trusted friends about what I might do after I’m done with my grad program and one of the things that keeps coming to the forefront of my mind is chaplaincy. I’ve been interested in it since undergrad almost 20 years ago, particularly because that degree is in psych and it seemed like a cool way to connect to other people. And now, as I’ve had more trauma in my own life, I’m inevitably more interested in supporting others in trauma specifically. As a caretaker, I’ve always been drawn to crisis. I never wanted to be the person pulling people out of fires, but I wanted to help those who did that saving work process what they experienced. A supporter of first responders or trauma-touched, so to speak. And as this discernment process came underway, my energy seemed to draw A LOT of opportunities for connection.

I cannot tell you how many people have come up and shared with me really personal stuff in the last few months. I’m totally into it. My experience with it lately has been so different because I’ve postured myself differently than I used to when I was in professional ministry, or even younger when I was in high school. I used to see these types of moments as a burden-transaction. Someone needed to unburden themselves by giving their burdens to me. And I needed to take them and either solve them or carry them. Now I see these moments entirely differently. I see myself as a kitchen colander. A person climbs into my space, a space I create to hold this moment and the energy that moves between us (some might say the Holy Spirit) is like the water washing over. us My part is holding the space. I am not the source of the energy. And when that person climbs out of my space, I am not weighed down. I was honored to have been given the opportunity to hold space and the person in it with me gets to have a moment where they feel seen and heard. The energy and life moving between us isn’t actually coming from either of us. That energy is its own. I like to think it belongs to God. It’s really interesting to experience something that is not your own. I cannot control it and I don’t wield it. But it visits me in these sacred moments.

I’m finding that in my old mindset, where I felt compelled to fix or carry, that I was actually dishonoring the other person. I couldn’t see past myself. And because of that, I took on other people’s work. I can have grace for myself in that because I really didn’t know another way and the churches I’ve been in leadership under have modeled this level of caretaking to me and called it holy. But I don’t think the role of a spiritual leader is to tidy up the pain and vulnerability of other people’s lives. We create a container for people to be open. They open and in vulnerability and safety, they see and do their work. When we step into that space and direct or even take the process from them (often pridefully thinking we know what to do or can do their work better), we are actually crippling the growth of other people. Spiritual direction is not tidying. In fact, spiritual direction embraces the chaos and makes room for it. The wisdom is found in the chaos, not in the tidy space where everything is under the rug. The times that I have seen growth within myself, I have found it while being held up by others, not tidied by them or silenced by judgement. I think the way we hold (or don’t hold) space for others can create or lessen the pain of the people around us.

Obsession with Innocence

As Jonathan VanNess would say, “I’m strugs to func” right now guys. (I told you it was the summer of Queer Eye). My kids both start new schools tomorrow and both situations are not what I was hoping for. One didn’t get into the arts school we dreamed about for years and the other didn’t get the accommodations I was hoping she’d get to adjust well. I’ve struggled with my feelings about this since we started pursuing the options we ended up not getting back in January. And being rejected from those opportunities was really painful and scary for me as a mom.

Tonight, I’m on the cusp of that transition. Tomorrow is the first day of school. Macy will take the bus for the first time, change classes for the first time, have a phone on her for the first time, and just freakin’ be in middle school (the school that everyone I know says is basically the worst place on the planet…still not sure how this is helpful?!?!) And Penny will start at “regular” school (as opposed to Montessori) in a beautiful brand new building with basically no one that she knows. She missed her old teacher tonight meeting her new one. She struggled on the playground equipment. She asked about what it would be like when we left her there tomorrow without anyone she knows.

I’m scared. I’m scared my kids are not ready because I don’t feel ready. I’m scared they’re going to get hurt and I won’t be there to protect them. I’m scared that the adults in charge of them are overworked and understaffed and will miss important things. I feel shame. I feel like I need to be able to control all the things and the fact that I can’t means I’m not a good mother. I know that’s not true but shame is a liar and I am crying tonight with those thoughts.

I’ve done the work to recognize the source of this shame. Between my exclusively Christian education and the purity culture movement, somehow I’ve learned that I’m not capable (so now my kids aren’t) of handling the awfulness that is the big bad world. I’ve learned that innocence is the most important thing - the thing to protect at all costs. I’ve learned that once it is lost there is no way to get it back. You are forever changed in the worst possible way. I feel really backed into a corner because the kids are in situations that I wouldn’t have chosen and cannot prevent. And we don’t have other choices. So somehow, whatever happens to them in these environments represents my inability to “save” them (hello codependency!) from certain, unredeemable doom.

I really think there’s something here. Some sort of parent-based shame. We are taught to be obsessed with innocence. That morality and purity must remain perfectly in tact in order for our kids to be happy and healthy and safe.

Here’s the thing, guys: THAT’S FUCKING BULLSHIT.

I know it. You know it. Thank God, my husband knows it and has been talking me down through my tears for months. Pain teaches us stuff. If my kids aren’t capable, guess what, the experiences they have will increase their capability! If they are never challenged or shocked or even harmed, how can they grow and learn and hold the pain that life will inevitably bring in adulthood?!?! How can they be compassionate if they’ve never needed compassion? How can they learn to be kind if they’re never treated poorly? Sometimes life lessons are waiting for us on dangerous barely-supervised bus rides and on playgrounds where you cry in fear and adults don’t hear you.

I’m scared. But I’m resolute. We are present, capable parents who will go to bat for our kids if needed. In the meantime, class is in session.